D 16 
,A22 
Copy 1 



AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 



'HE TEACHING OF HISTORY. 



BY 



HERBERT B. ADAMS, Ph. D., LL. D., 

OF JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 



(From the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1896 
Vol. I, pages 243-263.) 



« • 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1897. 






FEB 3 W03 
D. of u« 












XII —THE TEACHING OF HISTORY. 



By HERBERT B. ADAMS, Ph. D., LL. D., 
OF JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 



243 






\ 



V, 






v 



<v 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY, 



Bv Herbert B. Adams. 



In 1896 I spent my entire summer vacation in Great Britain, 
Ireland, and Scotland visiting university towns and attending 
so-called "Summer meetings," or summer schools, of which I 
have been making a study for the United States Bureau of 
Education. At Old Chester there was a meeting of the 
National Home Eeading Union, corresponding to the American 
"Chautauqua." This union now embraces thousands of 
readers and is under the practical guidance of some of the 
best university men in England. Dr. Mandel Creighton, the 
newly appointed Bishop of London, gave the opening address 
on "The moral aspect of history." Other historical lectures 
were given by Cambridge men and Girton women ; also talks 
on English architecture by eminent specialists, with Chester 
Cathedral and the Cistercian Abbey of Yalle Crucis for class 
rooms and object lessons. Excursions were made to ancient 
castles and places of historical interest near Chester. The 
town itself with its ancient walls, quaint architecture, and 
Roman survivals, Hawarden and Conway Castles, Offa's Dike, 
and the whole country round were open books for the teaching 
of history. 

The same was true of Old Cambridge, where University 
Extension students and teachers assembled from all parts of 
England, with guests from Belgium, Germany, Austria, Den- 
mark, and Scandinavia. History was taught not only in class 
rooms, but by the associations and architecture of the place. 
One of the most interesting courses of historical lectures de- 
livered at the Cambridge Summer Meeting was upon the sub- 
ject of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. What a striking 
object lesson of monastic spoliation and transformation was 
afforded by those Cambridge colleges. For example: (1) Trin- 
ity, the noblest college of them all, founded upon nine earlier 

245 



246 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 






religious establishments; (2) Jesus College, whose very build- 
ings once belonged to a Benedictine nunnery; (3) Sidney- 
Sussex (the college of Cromwell), built on the site of a Fran- 
ciscan monastery, the Grey Friars; (4) Emmanuel (the alma 
mater of John Harvard, the first university extensioner in the 
New World), erected on the very spot where the Dominicans 
or Black Friars lived and preached until dispossessed by that 
arch spoilsman, Henry VIII; (5) St. Mary Magdalene College, 
on ground once occupied by the Monks' Hostel of the Bene- 
dictine students from Croyland Abbey; (6) Peterhouse, the 
oldest college in Cambridge and an institutional offshoot of 
the bishopric of Ely. Think of an historical excursion to that 
old cathedral town, with lectures and peripatetic talks by the 
dean and his canons on the very premises of the Benedictines ! 
That was a kind of history teaching which I had never before 
enjoyed, and I gladly recommend it to American students and 
instructors who would like to vary their pedagogical experi- 



ence. 



In alternate years the Summer Meeting is held at Oxford, 
which is perhaps even richer than Cambridge in historic asso- 
ciations. At these summer gatherings Americans hear and 
meet some of the best historical teachers and lecturers in Eng- 
land and come home, as I did, with enlarged views of public 
educational duty and of modern university opportunities. It 
is not enough to teach history to college boys and girls. It 
must be taught to school teachers and to the American people. 
The campaign before this American democracy is educational, 
moral, and religious. History, politics, and economics, with 
religion, ethics, music, art, good literature, good newspapers, 
good public speaking, and good, popular lecturing Avill be 
among the winning forces. Churches, libraries, school boards, 
colleges, and universities must all enter the open field of mis- 
sionary labor for the public good, the salus publica. 

At the Edinburgh Summer Meeting I was most interested, 
pedagogically, in the remarkable attempt to combine polit- 
ical and natural science, sociology and biology, history and 
geography, zoology and botany. Prof. Patrick Geddes and his 
colleagues are actually succeeding in this combination. Dr. 
Wenley, a professor of philosophy lately called from Glasgow to 
the University of Michigan, lectured on the relation between sci- 
ence and philosophy. Mr. Branford discussed the "Comparative 
Economics of Europe from the standpoint of natural history." 



i 
THE TEACHING OF HISTORY. 247 

Some years ago I called attention to the original association 
of civil history with natural history in the ancient curriculum 
of Harvard College. That idea, which I once thought absurd, 
has been actually realized every summer at Edinburgh during 
the past ten years by Professor Geddes, whose lectures on 
"Contemporary Social Evolution" combined biology and his- 
tory. His course on "Scotland, historic and actual," was 
another study in social evolution, combining in a most inter- 
esting and suggestive way physical geography and ethnogra- 
phy with historical sociology. Professor Geddes laid great 
stress in his familiar teaching upon historic survivals and their 
interpretation — upon the survey of regional environments like 
that of the historic city of Edinburgh and the neighboring- 
kingdom of Fife. He was fond of taking his classes to the 
Outlook Tower on Castle Hill at Edinburgh and there pointing 
out object lessons in the physical and political history of Scot- 
land. He led a series of excursions to places combining bio- 
logical and social interest. Often would he replace the formal 
lecture of the class room by demonstration from actual and 
visible objects. For him the old town of Edinburgh, King 
Arthur's country, Melrose and Dryburgh abbeys, Eoman 
walls, Stirling Castle, the fiords, lakes, islands, hills of Scot- 
land, and even the Caledonian Canal were not only picturesque 
phenomena, but good illustrations of history, politics, eco- 
nomics, and sociology. Professor Geddes believes that " knowl- 
edge must always grow from the things and facts familiar and at 
hand to those far off and recondite." He does not believe in 
"proceeding from a past which the pupil has no means of real- 
izing toward a present which he never reaches at all." He 
says: "It is through the vivid endeavor to comprehend the 
present that we are impelled toward the reconstruction and 
interpretation of the past." 

In this connection as a teacher of history I should like to 
explain that I have never taught that all history is past poli- 
tics and that all politics are present history, but only that 
some history and some politics are thus defined. It must be 
fully recognized that history is past religion, past philosophy, 
past civilization, past sociology, and includes all man's recorded 
action and experience in organized society; but for practical 
and working purposes we may adopt any historical motto that 
we like. There is a sense in which the dictum of the late 
Professor Freeman is true, and it is recognized by some of the 



248 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

best scholars in England and Germany. Lord Acton, the suc- 
cessor of Prof. J. E. Seeley at Cambridge, said in a public 
lecture that a student of history "is the politician with his 
face turned backward." He quotes with manifest approval a 
German saying: "Die Geschichte ist derselbe Janus mit dem 
Doppelgesicht, das in der Geschichte, in die Yergangenheit, in 
der Politik in die Zukunft hinschaut." Droysen used to say : 
"What is politics to-day becomes history to-morrow." Pro. 
fessor Maureubrecher, at Leipzig, in his inaugural address, 
while recognizing that there are other fields of historical 
interest and inquiry beside the State — for example, the church, 
religion, art, and science — maintains that history proper is 
political history, for without law and government there can be 
no culture or civilization. History reaches its goal in politics 
and politics are always the resultant of history. The two 
subjects are related like past and present. 1 The subject of 
historic evolution would have no vital interest unless the past 
was in some way related to the present. " History made and 
history making," says Lord Acton, "are scientifically insepa- 
rable and separately unmeaning." 

Twenty years ago I was an advocate of local history. I 
then believed in an American approaching the great field of 
the world's historic life from the vantage ground of local inter- 
est. I taught my students to some extent the local history of 
New England, e. g., of Plymouth Plantations, of Salem and 
the Massachusetts Bay towns as typical of the English mode 
of settlement and as illustrative of the continuity of Germanic 
common land tenure and village institutions in the New World. 
The idea proved stimulating to similar studies in various parts 
of the country, North and South ; but I early discovered that 
there was not sufficient historic training and positive knowl- 
edge on the part of the average college or university student 
to justify the devotion of very much time to local studies on 
the part of either teacher or pupil. 

While I am still an advocate, for patriotic and other reasons, 
of American graduate students in their own country choosing 
for the most part American subjects for historical research, I 
believe that an American teacher of history should not lead 
his class prematurely, by lectures or seminary exercises, into 

' For a fuller discussion of "History and Politics, " see Proceedings of the Sixth Animal 
Meeting of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools in the Middle States and 
Maryland, 1894: "Is History Past Politics?" By H. B. Adams. 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY. 249 

local, State, or even national byways of specialized historical 
inquiry. In short, my present conviction is that a long period 
of college and university study, say, four or five years, in gen- 
eral history, should precede specialization in local history or 
American history. 1 have been acting upon this conviction in 
department work at the Johns Hopkins University, where for 
a long time fully two-thirds of both collegiate and graduate 
work in history has been upon Old World ground rather than 
upon New World territory. The college or university teacher, 
it seems to me, should seek to give bis pupils a proper back- 
ground of English, European, classical, and Oriental history 
before allowing them to specialize in the history of their 
country. 

Of course this preliminary training can not usually be given 
by one teacher. The work properly involves a division of labor 
and an organized department. But sometimes it is necessary, 
for financial and other reasons, for one college professor or 
teacher of history to represent the whole subject of human 
history. Under such circumstances I think he would better 
represent it by giving preliminary courses in general history, 
or the history of civilization, than he would by confining the 
attention of his class to the narrower fields of French, German, 
English, or American history, whether local or national. 

Many ot us remember the old-time limitations of college 
work in history, and think with gratitude of those broad and 
comprehensive courses of instruction that were given by indi- 
vidual teachers like Professors Diman, Stille, White, Torrey, 
and Allen. About all the history that students learned in 
those days was through the medium of general lecture courses 
or Guizot's History of Civilization. It is a gratifying evidence 
of the permanent value of such methods of general instruction 
that excellent text-books on European history and civilization 
have been written by well-known members of this Association. 
A recent American work of this kind is Prof. G. P. Fisher's 
History of the Nations and of their Progress in Civilization. 

I have found that one of the best ways of teaching collegiate 
students general history is by the well-worn and ancient paths 
of Jewish and church history. Starting with Chaldeean and old 
Babylonian civilization, one can show the kinship of Hebrew 
and Semitic ideas and institutions. Phoenician and Egyptian 
civilizations may be reviewed and the points of contact with 
Israel clearly noted. The contributions of Israel's neighbors 



250 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

to Jewish civilization and to world history should be tabulated 
in thesis form by members of the class and fortified by cita- 
tions from private reading. 

This method of undergraduate training in the historical 
sociology of the Hebrews involves to a certain extent the 
actual use of original sources of Hebrew literature, and at the 
same time an acquaintance with matters of general human 
interest about which American college graduates know far 
too little. A mayor of Baltimore was once called upon to 
give an address on the rededication of a Methodist Episcopal 
Church (colored) called " The Ebenezer Church.' 7 The pious 
mayor, wishing to testify to his familiarity with the Old Testa- 
ment as well as his general sympathy with the colored voters, 
said: "Men and brethren: I- have always had the greatest 
respect for that old Hebrew patriarch Ebenezer.' 7 The best of 
this joke is that it is obscure (I Sam. vii, 12) and needs a con- 
cordance or a commentary. I have told the story to many col- 
lege students and some professors, and am always gratified if 
anybody sees the point. 

Some, persons may object to this Baltimore story about 
Ebenezer as local history, but surely it is worth while to teach 
a class of boys that " Ebenezer 7 ' was a rude stone altar erected 
to the Lord on a battlefield where the Philistines were driven 
backward. It illustrates the historic origin of many a sacred 
menhir or monumental column from ancient Palestine to the 
Pillars of Hercules. It is worth while for liberally educated 
college students to learn something of the fundamental insti- 
tutions of the Shemites, as taught by such men as Eobertson 
Smith and George Adam Smith, "the two Smiths 77 who have 
so enlightened modern Scotland that trials for heresy are no 
longer possible there, as they still are in our own country. 
Last summer when I was in Scotland, a theological professor 
was retired from office by the constituted authorities because 
he knew nothing of the higher criticism and the students would 
no longer listen to him. 

There is a perfectly safe way of illuminating the modern 
student's mind without destroying his religious faith. That 
way lies through Hebrew literature, social and institutional his- 
tory. The higher critics have about accomplished their work. 
Joseph Jacobs, in his " Studies in Biblical Archaeology 77 (XII), 
says: "Literary criticism seems now to have come to an end 
of its tether with regard to the 'slicing 7 of the Hexateueh; 



THE TEACHING OF HISTOrlY. 251 

the reconstructions of Genesis by Fripp and Bacon, and of 
the whole Hexateuch by Addis, and the exhaustive work of 
Holzinger, all serve to show this. They all confirm my con- 
tention that on this line of research we can not further go. 
Literary search per se can not solve the problem of the Hexa- 
teuch, so far as that problem is coucerned with the develop- 
ment of institutions of the ancient Hebrews." 

Recently I have endeavored to so broaden and deepen my 
course in Hebrew history that it might gradually become a 
means of reviewing various Oriental religions. This year I 
began with Confucianism and Shintooism in China and Japan 
and continued with Brahminism and Buddhism in India. 
From this Asiatic background my class approached Judaism 
and Christianity. 

Church history is a general course of liberalizing and illu- 
minating college study, and one of the best introductions to 
the history of mediaeval and modern Europe. The subject is 
usually monopolized by theological seminaries, where it is 
sometimes taught in a very narrow way. It ought to be 
taught not as the history of councils, creeds, and heresies, but 
as the institutional exponent of Christian civilization, in which 
the mediaeval and modern world live and move and havetbeir 
being. Lord Acton agrees with Bishop Stubbs in the view 
that " Modern history, including mediaeval history in the term, 
is coextensive in its field of view, in its habits of criticism, in 
the person of its most famous students, with ecclesiastical 
history." With this great subject naturally belong the history 
of art and education and the historic relations between civil 
and ecclesiastical society, which find their best and highest 
expression in America, where a free church in a free State has 
become an institutional reality. This is, perhaps, America's 
greatest and most original contribution to history and polit- 
ical science. 

The beginning and the end of historical evolution are the 
most interesting things to study and teach. A former presi- 
dent of this Association, Henry Adams, once said: "There is 
no history left for Americans to write except that of the Korth 
American Indians and the twentieth century." Although 
somewhat satirical, this remark implies a certain truth. All 
history begins with savagery and ends, like the story of the 
Jews and of the Christian Church, in prophetic ideals — in 
visions of things to come. 



252 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

American teachers of history have a singular advantage of 
being able, within the limits of their own country, to illustrate 
the beginning and the end of historic evolution. The ethno- 
logical researches of Major Powell and his associates have 
taught us that the rudimentary forms of religion and govern- 
ment may be studied in the folklore and tribal customs of the 
North American Indians. Last summer, at the University of 
Edinburgh, I met M. Eeclus, an eminent authority in the field 
of comparative religion, and he assured me that the historical 
world owes a great debt to Major Powell and the United 
States Government for encouraging and publishing such 
remarkable contributions to the knowledge of primitive faiths 
and institutions. 

The American teacher of history should not, however, stop 
on this side of the world if he would fully understand the sig- 
nificance of the North American Indians. He must compare 
their religious and social ideas with those of other savages. 
He must discover the extraordinary resemblance between 
American forms of spirit worship and ancestor worship with 
those in ancient Babylonia, in China, and Japan. He must 
point out the gradual evolution of higher forms of stellar and 
solar worship. He must show how man began to reverence 
heavenly powers; how he personified natural forces; how he 
translated heroes, ancestors, and great kings into celestial 
deities, and how the divine principle of fatherhood triumphed 
over and unified all. 

There are few subjects of inquiry more fascinating to teach- 
ers or to students than the historical evolution of religion and 
of customary law or government. The history of marriage, as 
treated by Westermarck, and historieal sociology, as presented 
by such masters as Herbert Spencer, Fustel de Coulauges, 
McLennan, Morgan, and Sir Henry Maine, are subjects which 
I have been teaching by lectures to graduate students at the 
Johns Hopkins University during the present term. I require 
every student to tabulate the results of his note-taking and 
private reading in the form of a syllabus suitable for future 
reference and possible use when the young man becomes a 
teacher himself. A surprising amount of good materials is 
thus classified and assimilated. Every student develops his 
own system of topical arrangement and takes pride in inde- 
pendent work. From the start, note taking on lectures and 
books becomes vital and self-helpful, instead of a mechanical, 



THE TEACHING OF HISTOKY. 253 

perfunctory process. In one of my graduate courses, that on 
the Nineteenth (Jentury, students have been encouraged each 
to give a class lecture and submit to a general criticism by 
his fellows. The course on the Early history of society 
develops from a study of savage customs into more and more 
civilized institutions, and ends in a review of Greek politics, 
historical and theoretical. The course is given to graduates 
only, and once in three years. 

For purposes of graduate training in general history, I have 
given each year two representative courses of class instruction, 
one in ancient history and one in modern history. I got the 
idea from Professor Oncken, of Giessen. All I care to say 
about the plan is that it works well for purposes of department 
training. I do not pretend to cover the entire ground. Certain 
phases only of the subject are presented. Books are recom- 
mended and read. Organized quizzes and written examina- 
tions do the rest. 

It seems to me a mistaken policy for instructors to allow 
their college students to specialize prematurely in narrow 
fields of local or even national history, when the great empire 
of universal history is all undiscovered. For college boys and 
girls the reading of good selections from a few standard 
authors on great chapters of the world's civilization yields bet- 
ter educational results than does the close study of historical 
sources for any given period. Interest may be quickened and 
the judgment may be trained in historical matters by the com- 
parison of different historians without the expenditure of so 
much precious time as is required by the study and digest of 
original sources. It is enough for the ordinary collegian if he 
is introduced to a few good books of history and politics. It 
is too much of a burden to load him down with documents and 
references to archives and sources. The end to be accom- 
plished is historical and political culture, the development of a 
real interest in the world's life and experience. 

The preparation of historical essays is also a good literary 
means of training collegiate students. They learn by writing 
to digest the results of private historical reading, but the read- 
ing of these essays by the instructor, or the presentation of 
even the best of them to a class, is wearisome and unprofitable. 
If a teacher will take pains to mark with care every error of 
statement or style, he can render a substantial service to his 



254 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

students and thus aid one of Ms best academic allies — the 
department of English literature. 

Excellent historical results have been secured from under- 
graduate classes in Baltimore by requiring the students to 
tabulate their knowledge of certain subjects in thesis form. 
For example, in institutional history and the history of civil- 
ization, college boys, in the second year of their course, have 
put on record, in brief space, a surprising amount of well- 
digested material, topically arranged and derived from a com- 
parative study of the best standard authorities. China, Japan, 
India, Chaldea, Egypt, Phoenicia, and Palestine have been 
the fields of our study of the history of civilization. The idea 
is to treat topically and by groups the social, economic, reli- 
gious, and governmental institutions of the Eastern World, 
ancient and modern, somewhat as Herbert Spencer and his 
coworkers have done in their descriptive sociology or groups 
of sociological facts. The students give references to authori- 
ties, which they have actually read, for every statement or 
group of facts which appear in the written digest. This kind 
of work is not an essay, but simply a collection of theses or 
propositions. Materials, thus gathered and arranged, are fairly 
well assimilated by the student and often prove very suggestive 
to the teacher. The papers are easily examined, and are some- 
times of practical benefit to the class if papers are exchanged 
or exhibited for a comparison of results. Graduate students 
at the Johns Hopkins University first acquired this method in 
undergraduate classes. 

After all, the great thing is to interest students in what they 
are doing, to persuade them that it is worth doing, and that, 
for the time being and for them, it is the most important work 
on earth. It is like training for a boat race or a football match- 
Study becomes an absorbing passion. I have seen old athletes 
forget their first love, scorn delights, and live laborious days, 
for the simple sake of reading good books, writing a disserta- 
tion, and winning a doctor's degree. One of the reasons why 
Johns Hopkins graduates cut no figure in athletics is simply 
this : They have no time to spare for the old familiar games. 
These men are now training for academic life and professional 
careers. It is the business of the trainer to keep his men in 
good condition, and he tries to do it; but, alas! some of them 
break down and some never arrive at the goal. As in the old 
Greek torch race, when one man falls another catches the 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY. 255 

torch and carries it on. " The best master is quickly distanced 
by the better pupil," says Lord Acton. 

"Run, Pheidippid.es. one race more! the meed is thy due!" 

The true function of the teacher of history is to kindle the 
historical spirit in his pupils, to teach them to know them- 
selves, and to understand the development of mankind histor- 
ically from the past. " The pupil may become much wiser than 
his instructor," said Frederic Denison Maurice. "■ He may not 
accept his conclusions, but he will own, ' you awakened me to 
be myself ; ' for that I thank you." 

REMARKS BY PROFESSORS FISHER AND ANDREWS. 

Professor Fisher (in the chair): Professor Adams in his 
paper referred to the advantage of the study of history as 
including a study of politics in the past, and especially on 
account of the generic relation of the politics of the past to 
the present. Perhaps I may be allowed to refer to a remark 
which I was reminded of made by Dr. Arnold, of Eugby — the 
additional fact that in the study of ancient life, ancient poli- 
tics, we have a field where a perfectly dispassionate study of 
politics is possible. In the midst of the life in which we live, 
and the political campaigns in which all are so zealously excited, 
there is a difficulty in that dispassionate and unprejudiced con- 
templation of political life which is possible in historical study. 

Professor Andrews. There is always a certain misfortune, 
perhaps, in following two speakers with whom one so ardently 
sympathizes as I do; nevertheless there is always testimony 
which can be stated, even though one follows along in the same 
line and defends very much the same propositions. 

I wonder if, in taking up the subject of teaching history and in 
defending a certain method, we are not more or less influenced 
by the peculiar conditions under which we are obliged to work 
as practical teachers. I happen, for instance, to be one of 
those unfortunates who is obliged to cover a very large period 
of time; that is, to instruct my students in as much history as 
I have time for, Avhether in covering a period which shall be, 
in my mind, sufficient to train them and instruct them at the 
same time. Therefore, naturally I am inclined to advocate, so 
far as it relates to certain portions of my work, a course of 
instruction in general history. I propose to limit myself 
entirely to that phase of the subject. 



256 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

I can not wholly agree "with Professor Burgess's paper. His- 
tory is more than a residuum. It is the unit, and it is the sum 
total, which is not merely the sum of all the parts. There 
may be many different aspects of history, but history in itself 
considered certainly is something more than those various 
aspects simply brought into one whole. There is an organic 
character to history which is something more than a mere 
summing together. Therefore, if I did not believe that there 
was such a definition of history, that history were of that 
character, I certainly should not be able with any conscience 
to teach as a preliminary course in college that kind of history 
which I believe to be the history in the largest sense of the 
Avord. I can not teach a mere residuum. 

History, then, is the organic evolution of peoples. I agree 
with Professor Emerton, that there is no exact definition which 
anyone can adopt and defend as against all others. After all, 
the definition is very like the method. It must be, in some 
way or other, created by the process of instruction, and I must 
say that I can only frame my own definition of history by the 
method which I should employ in instructing students in that 
which I believe to be most essential for them. Therefore, I 
would make a plea for, in the early years of a college course, 
the instructing of students in that general history which alone, 
I believe, the world is able to give to students — that which 
they ought to have before them first — on to the higher grades of 
work. What are such results % What does one seek to attain 
in such instruction 1 ? Something more, I believe, than mere 
interest. There is something more in historical instruction 
than the creation of an interest, although that stands very 
high. There is, I believe, the development in the mind of the 
student of a sense of criticism; a power of judging as to that 
which is important and that which is secondary; a power of 
concentrating all their energy and thought upon those phases 
of human life which stand out preeminently important and 
which characterizes a certain age — the age in which they exist. 
Now, those preeminently important aspects of history are 
varied according to the characteristics of the period in which 
the people lived, characterized by a certain degree of intel- 
lectual or religious or political or constitutional development. 
Secondly, I would endeavor to arouse in a class of beginners a 
judicial sense. That has already been mentioned to-night by 
Professor Fisher, the chairman. That judicial sense which 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY. 257 

enables a student to weigh evidence; and not merely weigh 
evidence for the purpose of bringing out results as an original 
investigation, but in order to exercise as toward the material 
used a careful judicial power, which will enable them to com- 
pare; not to unduly exaggerate this, or underestimate that, but 
to act with reason, with common sense, with a mind free from 
partiality and prejudices, and to draw conclusions which are as 
near right as human nature is capable of attaining. I do not 
believe that can be attained by study of the present, and we 
have to get our first training in a judicial attitude in the past — 
in that history which does not in any way concern us, either in 
our politics or religion. Thirdly, I believe that such students 
should be taught — and perhaps it should stand very high as 
one of the results of our teaching — a proper sense of perspective 
and proportion in history, so that they will be able to estimate 
not only the value of the events of the age as compared with 
other events of the same age, but will be able to estimate the 
value and character of one age as compared with the value and 
character of another age. 

History is, as was just stated, an evolution. We can not 
infuse into an early period ideas, thoughts, and conceptions, 
either legal, administrative, or constitutional, which belong to 
the present time, and unless one is led carefully over a large 
period of time and is given a sufficient amount of historical 
material to attain to that perspective ,to see the relation of one 
period to another, to see how certain phases which are com- 
mon to us to-day have grown, little by little, out of the past 
and have become part of the present, unless there be a period 
of time, such a perspective can hardly be successfully attained. 
Therefore, I believe and I practice — because I believe it, partly, 
and because the conditions under which I work are such as to 
make it necessary, and it makes a difference whether one has 
the group system or the class system, and this may cover the 
whole of the years or only one or two years — I believe that 
the early years of a college course should be given up to work 
in general history. The question naturally arises : Where is 
one to begin and where is one to end 1 ? I wish it were possible 
in my own work to follow the suggestion of my old instructor, 
Dr. Adams, and begin with the Jews, but unfortunately there 
are time limits, and I have to begin at a later period in order to 
come down to that which is, after all, the ultimate of all history. 
The end is the understanding of things as they are to-day. 
H, Doc. 353 17 



258 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

Now, necessarily, in making good citizens,we teach them a 
comprehension of the issues of to day in such a way as to 
interest them. Therefore, I find that about all we can accom- 
plish is to begin with the old Roman Empire and to come down 
by gradual sequence through the most important of the issues 
which follow from that time to the present. In that work I 
believe firmly in the use to the largest extent of illustrative 
material; that is, that the student should be taught not to 
depend upon the lecturer or to accept his spoken word as final, 
but wherever it is possible to be sent, not only to valuable 
works of the most recent character, whether they be in our 
own language or any other, whether they be long or short, but 
to be sent to the original documents, and to be encouraged, 
just as far as time allows, to read them and to read them care- 
fully. That I believe to be entirely different from Professor 
Emerton's characterization as top-heavy history. It is not the 
creation of history. That is a later matter, but it is letting the 
student gain by a gradual process of familiarity, an acquaint- 
ance with the actual written word and the actual appearance, 
form, and reality of that which is a part and goes to make up 
history as a whole. Illustrative material I have found to have 
aided infinitely to the enthusiasm and interest, whereas a mere 
written lecture would be in itself of only doubtful interest. 
To give students a document and to have at their own disposal 
a collection of documents is to give them something that is 
real, something that has a reality of its own, and brings them 
pretty closely in contact with the epoch with which the history 
treats. 

REPORT OP PROFESSOR McMASTER'S ADDRESS. 

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, in the few remarks 
which I am to have the honor of making this evening I shall 
endeavor to remember the injunction that a shoemaker should 
stick to his last. Therefore I will confine myself entirely to 
the history of our own country. I do that all the more gladly 
because, coming at the end of such a line of predecessors, I 
find that is the only history, except that of the Lost Tribes 
[laughter], which has not been commented upon so far. In 
presenting it I would like again to say a few words for the 
great mass of students of history— those, I mean, that get 
their history in our common schools and stop their instruction 
there. We know, of course, that the great mass of the thou- 
sands of boys and girls that are studying the history of the 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY. 259 

United States, almost all of them stop with its text-books and 
never again obtain any other history of the United States 
except that which they receive during Presidential campaigns 
[laughter], or periodically, when some of our Presidents see 
fit to give the State Department a show. 

At the outset of any discussion of this kind, I think we want 
to draw very clearly a distinction between what we would like 
to have and what we can get. We have to deal with the prac- 
tical question: What can we get? At the base of that ques- 
tion is the other question : What do we want, aud why do we 
want if? What is the use, in other words, of a student ever 
studying the history of the United States'? To that there 
seem to be a vast number of answers, which can be summed 
up under three heads. Some tell us that the object is that the 
student ought to know the history of his own country. We 
are told again that in a nation such as ours, resting as it does 
upon the vast mass of the people for its stability, it is espe- 
cially necessary that those whose course runs in the history 
should have a good knowledge of the history of their own 
country. And we are told again by others that there is some- 
thing in history which makes it the only subject which is capa 
ble of reasonable, philosophical treatment in order to enable a 
boy or a girl to distinguish between truth and falsity; hence, 
to understand that there is such a thing as a temperate and a 
hasty judgment, and that he or she will revise his or her judg- 
ment just as it is seen to be revised by the processes of time. 

Now, without going into any discussion as to whether these 
are good answers or not, we will let them go for what they are 
worth, and come back to the other question : What can we get? 
Is it possible to so teach history in our schools all over the 
country that some real and lasting benefit shall be acquired? 
That depends upon four elements: First, there is a teacher; 
second, there is a text-book; third, there is the pupil; fourth, 
there is the time allowed. With the first two we can deal, 
but with the student and the time allowed we can not so 
easily deal. In no course of education is it possible to give to 
everyone the time that we would like to. Again, we have 
to deal with the average student rather than with a select few. 
Those two elements, then, are out of our control. The other 
two, the text-book and the teacher, are entirely within our 
control. It is not unreasonable to insist that the teacher of 
history everywhere should be trained for his work; that the 



260 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

day must pass when the teachers of young boys and girls will 
be to so large an extent persons who do not intend to make 
teaching a profession. The time has come when a teacher 
must be educated for his work. Insisting, then, that the 
teacher shall be all that he should be, we come to the other 
question : What can be done with a good teacher with the 
present text-books? The text-book is far from what it ought 
to be. It seems to me that it is possible to so present the his- 
tory of our country to young students, within a limited amount 
of time, that they can get from it not merely information, but 
certain fundamental principles which will be of benefit to 
them and enable them to understand very much better the 
problems they will have to deal with in later times. It seems 
to me that it would be better to begin by calling attention to 
the fact that this country was originally in the possession of a 
certain number of people of foreign nations; that it has passed, 
by a certain process, from them to us, and that is about all 
they need to know of the early colonial history. Then that 
the Spaniards, for reasons not at all accidental, occupied the 
Gulf Coast; that the French began their career in Canada, 
for reasons again perfectly well understood, and that these na- 
tions, with the English, were kept apart for a certain period, 
and that when they came in contact a very trifling incident on 
Lake Champlain prevented the French from ever getting down 
on the Middle Atlantic Coast, and that out of that grew mat- 
ters of vast importance to us. When, afterwards, they were 
driven far to the westward, that they were brought into con- 
tact with such information as enabled them to discover a great 
river; that the Spaniards, for other reasons perfectly suscepti- 
ble, were held in the southwest, and that the English then 
were given an opportunity to develop along the seaboard. 
Now, with so simple an introduction as that, it is fair to suppose 
that an ordinary student could understand how the thirteen 
colonies were organized, and that the English were developing 
an entirely different form of civilization from that which was 
being planted by the French in the Mississippi Valley, or by 
the Spaniards farther to the south. Then there should be pre- 
sented to the mind of the student the great struggle for tbe 
possession of the continent, and that when that ended the first 
of these great nations disappeared as a nation from our his- 
tory and its place was taken by the English. Now, then, the 
student has obtained sufficient knowledge by this time to see 



THE TEACHING OF HISTOKY. 261 

how the country which we occupy was populated by these 
people; how in the course of time they came in conflict, and 
how out of that conflict resulted the disappearance of one of 
them and the expansion of the territory of the other. ISow 
comes the struggle between the. colonists and the parent 
country. If that is presented in the proper way the student 
will obtain a far better knowledge of the instrument, of which 
none of us know too much 7 called the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. That is nothing but the great American Whig 
platform of the day. Every specification which went in there 
meant something to the men to whom it appealed. To us it 
means nothing. The number of persons who could take that 
instrument up and, beginning with the first charge, specify 
exactly what that meant, are extremely few. I remember 
not long ago to have seen an answer to a question which it 
seemed to me summed it all up. It was a question asked by 
a teacher: What is the Declaration of Independence? The 
boy to whom the question was put replied : " It is that part of 
the book at the back which nobody ever reads." [Laughter.] 
Now, if the Declaration of Independence is presented to a 
student as it should be the student ought to know what those 
things which were thought to be serious enough to be the 
cause of a great rebellion meant. Now, then, it seems to me 
the student is ready for another idea which is not beyond his 
comprehension. If he is to understand the history of our own 
country from that day down, he must recognize that when we 
became independent and free there were along the seaboard 
three great centers of population, one clustering around Boston 
as a center, another around Philadelphia and Baltimore, and 
a third farther south; that each had been founded by people 
utterly distinct from each other ; that the motive which brought 
them together and the laws and customs which they estab- 
lished were utterly distinct from each other; that when the 
time came for them to spread westward that they streamed 
out of these three centers, not in a miscellaneous sort of way, 
and that they went due west, and that that has been the 
marked characteristic of emigration so far as we can trace it. 
If these people had all been alike, the results would probably 
have been different. Each stream as it passed across the con- 
tinent planted its own institutions, and it built up a population 
east and west which to some extent was similar. Then in the 
course of time events, which it is not necessary to spend much 



262 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

time on or to remind you of, so developed those bands of 
population that they came to be by the time of the civil war 
two distinct nations; that there grew up in consequence of 
that two sets of people who utterly failed to understand each 
other, and to a large extent do not do so to the present day; 
that those in the extreme south were in every sense different 
from those at the extreme north, and we had the division of 
the country on an east and west line. Now, if attention is 
Called, then, as it can be by the aid of even such maps as 
are given in the census reports, to that important fact, the 
student has got another. What use should he make of it? 
The next fact, I think, should be that while those immense 
streams of population have been passing westward they have 
not gone slowly or steadily. Sometimes they have moved with 
great rapidity, and at other times they have been checked, 
and the causes which checked them are practically the history 
of our country since. It is easy enough to understand that 
when the French Eevolution was opened certain conditions 
were presented to a certain part of the country which enabled 
them to be the great ocean carriers of the world, and to an- 
other part of the country to become the greater producers of 
the world. That produced such a condition of affairs on the 
seaboard that the population was stacked up there, and there 
it remained until that condition had ended. Now, that brings 
the student down to the war of 1812. By that time an en- 
tirely new condition of affairs existed. Then began that rush 
of population which built up in a few years five cities in the 
Mississippi Valley. Then something checked it. Then the 
student has brought to his attention certain ideas which per- 
haps never occurred to him before. That is, it was possible 
for such a thing as a canal to cross this State and to produce 
a condition of affairs which was in itself a great social revolu- 
tion. The introduction of a new way of doing things and 
better means of transportation, enabling men to cover a larger 
field, led to the growth of great cities in the East. Then 
came a period of hard times, and then the causes for it. The 
student can be presented with certain ideas which will enable 
him to understand the history of his country far better, and 
give him a better idea of the growth of population, and enable 
him to see that, while our ancestors drew up the famous Dec- 
laration of Independence they made something which they 
could not practice; that at the very time when they were de- 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY. 263 

daring that all men were equal they were forming State con- 
stitutions which made them most unequal ; and we find, then, in 
that great instrument — the ordinance of 1787 — that these men 
put into it a kind of government they could not give them- 
selves. Now, it seems to me that in such a way it is possible 
to do something to improve the general condition of history 
teaching in our schools. Whether that is done or not rests 
not upon any individual' or body of men, but it rests upon 
every citizen; and it seems to me that no better use could be 
made of the opportunities afforded by this Association than 
to do something toward the improvement of history teaching, 
not merely in our colleges, but in the common schools of the 
land, dealing especially with those who come to us from for- 
eign lands, so that they may see the history of our country in 
such a way that they shall clearly understand it. [Applause.] 



